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Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

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Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#151

Post by linkmotif »

vbezhenar wrote: post #126
djsumdog wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in Moldova a few years back and the friends I was visiting only spoke Romanian. Almost all native Moldovans speak Russian and Romanian (and can read/write both alphabets). Some people would only talk to my friends in Russian though, even when they kept saying they only knew Romanian. One of my friends said this was a political thing, with some people using the choice of their default language being who they sup…

I might imagine that someone would refuse to speak Russian to underline his anti-Russian position, but I never met such a person.

> but I never met such a person.

Probably 30-70% of every FSU republic except Belarus.

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#152

Post by [deleted] »

dghughes wrote: post #110
eloff wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Canada is a great example, since the vast majority of native French speakers are located in only one region. There is a stronger case for English Spanish bilingualism in the US than French English in Canada. With Kazakhstan, I can totally see the case for equal status of Russian.

I wouldn't say located in one region I mean sure Quebec has a lot of French speakers now but so do other regions in Canada. Look at Ontario, NB (majority there too?), even NS and PEI, plus don't forget Metis in the prairies. Hell a story on D'Arcy McGee a few days ago mentioned the majority of the population of Montreal was Irish in the late 1800s. Maybe more accurate is the majority of French speakers are concentrat…

[deleted]

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#154

Post by sergers »

dghughes wrote: post #110
eloff wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Canada is a great example, since the vast majority of native French speakers are located in only one region. There is a stronger case for English Spanish bilingualism in the US than French English in Canada. With Kazakhstan, I can totally see the case for equal status of Russian.

I wouldn't say located in one region I mean sure Quebec has a lot of French speakers now but so do other regions in Canada. Look at Ontario, NB (majority there too?), even NS and PEI, plus don't forget Metis in the prairies. Hell a story on D'Arcy McGee a few days ago mentioned the majority of the population of Montreal was Irish in the late 1800s. Maybe more accurate is the majority of French speakers are concentrat…

Eastern Canada, Ontario to the east coast, has alot more french speakers in that region, compared to the rest of Canada.

Even in Ontario, there are people who will only converse in French.

Western Canada, I have never had to use french ever outside of highschool which I dropped French class after the required years.

Alot of us resented being forced to learn French in BC cause practically never used.

You don't need to know any french on the west coast, but it's a requirement in alot of places in eastern canada.

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#155

Post by blattimwind »

eCa wrote: post #112
fusiongyro wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a purely linguistic standpoint, I think Kazakh is a better fit for Cyrillic than the Latin alphabet. Look at all the diacritics they have to use to make this work. But we both know the real motivations here probably do not include cleaning up the orthography.

Lots of latin-alphabet languages have letters that don’t exist in English. Czech, for example, has 42 letters[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_orthography

By that logic German uses a thirty letter alphabet, but no one says so.

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#156

Post by tomsmeding »

Fins wrote: post #118
btilly wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I studied Russian enough to know that you are wrong. Technical words, recent inventions, sports and brand names tend to be straightforward transliterations. Plus more are borrowed. Take Russian words like диносавр, Макдоналдс, киоск, and гамбургер. You probably have no idea what they mean, but the direct transliterations are dinosavr, Makdonalds, kiosk, and gamburger are a little easier to guess? Not every word by an…

To a point of pedantry, it's диноЗавр. Also, холодильник would be transliterated something like kholodeelnik. But you always have to be aware of "false friends". Russian магазин (magazin) does not mean what one might think it does.

Knowing French, though, and thinking that "magazin" will probably sound more like "magasin" than "magasine", the meaning wasn't entirely unexpected.

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#157

Post by jsgo »

amaccuish wrote: post #102
jsgo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the quoted is one scenario if the similarity to words applies (this doesn't always apply in Spanish or French either). But to your example, I'd feel more comfortable fumbling around looking in a English to Turkish book looking for D followed by i without dot (I'm sure it has a better name than that, but furthering the point where vaguely similar glyphs help), followed by s with a protruding curl at bottom (see previo…

The second letter in both those words is the same. The first character differs, the next does not.

I probably stated it wrong, but meant the first two characters between them, that was my mistake. As in first position of each. Kind of repeated it initially.

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#158

Post by aethant »

vbezhenar wrote: post #126
djsumdog wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in Moldova a few years back and the friends I was visiting only spoke Romanian. Almost all native Moldovans speak Russian and Romanian (and can read/write both alphabets). Some people would only talk to my friends in Russian though, even when they kept saying they only knew Romanian. One of my friends said this was a political thing, with some people using the choice of their default language being who they sup…

I might imagine that someone would refuse to speak Russian to underline his anti-Russian position, but I never met such a person.

You should visit Ukraine. Ha

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#159

Post by emodendroket »

lmm wrote: post #138
emodendroket wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cyrillic is also a phonetic alphabet and you can pretty easily add a Cyrillic keyboard to your phone or laptop. These arguments seem like they belong in a discussion of Chinese script or something similar.

Learning to read/write Cyrillic is still a substantial, intimidating step. I felt a lot more comfortable in Turkey and Romania than in Bulgaria, just because the Latin alphabet meant I could at least read printed signs aloud and people could tell me what sign to look for.

If learning to write in a new script is a substantial and intimidating step, doesn't it make more sense to put it on visitors than on your entire citizenry?

Re: Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based

#160

Post by FRex »

fusiongyro wrote: post #37
vbezhenar wrote: post #17

I'm ethnical Russian living in Kazakhstan and I think that it's not a very wise decision. As correctly written in the article, overwhelming majority of Kazakhstani citizens speak and write Russian well. I just don't see any point with this change, but costs are tremendous, you have to rewrite every single book including learning books, you have to replace every street plate. When overwhelming majority of people speak…

From a purely linguistic standpoint, I think Kazakh is a better fit for Cyrillic than the Latin alphabet. Look at all the diacritics they have to use to make this work. But we both know the real motivations here probably do not include cleaning up the orthography.

It's really not that bad.

They've added 9 of their own to 33 of Russian Cyrillic for a total of 42 when using it for Kazakh. Now they're gonna add 6 diacritics and two digraphs, that's much less already.

Compare this to even Polish that has:

1. 9 additional letters: ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, ż.

2. Technically no x, v nor q, but everyone knows their sound so casually or artistically you can use them, just not in 100% orthographically correct Polish.

3. 7 digraphs: ch, cz, dz, dź, dż, rz, sz.

And it's not really a problem in any way and the words are distinct enough that if you skip all the Polish specific stuff it's still 100% readable, people texting or writing online or Polish comments in code (in an ASCII file) often do that.

I've seen many systems (CJK, Arabic, Hebrew, various European ones) and have somewhat an interest in this stuff and I don't think it's a big deal at all.

I also think (as a layman) that it's really not about the system anymore but about fitting it to your language (within reason, e.g. don't try to write Polish with Chinese characters), someone could say Polish butchered Latin or gave it 16 warts but it works and I'd say the phonology is way saner than English (okay, that's not an achievement but still, no one tells English off for it's use of Latin despite it's crazy pronunciations).

I also wondered about an experiment of using both Cyrillic and Latin together at once in a language that already uses one of them to denote foreign words (e.g. Polish with foreign words in Cyrillic or Russian with foreign words in Latin), just like katakana in Japanese does (among other uses). I wonder if Kazakh writing (casual or maybe even official) with loanwords from Russian (if they exist, I don't know Kazakh, maybe they have none) might do that just for Russian foreign words, to avoid transcribing them into the Latin alphabet (which would be more awkward than just using them directly as they could in their Cyrillic which was a superset of Russian Cyrillic and would either ignore their own Latin phonology and diacritics or require a new transcription style that is unlike the other ones, thus adding to confusion).

Using Cyrillic and/or Latin of course has implications about politics, history and religion, with Cyrillic being associated with Russia, Soviet Bloc, Orthodox Christianity, etc.

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